


Chance Meetings.

by ForgottenChesire



Series: Meetings [2]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, McCoy's Mouth, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-02-23 01:49:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23237065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ForgottenChesire/pseuds/ForgottenChesire
Summary: “While I expected you to get me in trou- good lord man, what happened to your hand!?”His hand, which had ceased to hurt thanks to the meditation, throbs once in painful tandem with his heart. Most illogical.“It has been hurt,” Spock says dryly.Spock and Leonard have a second meeting.
Relationships: James T. Kirk & Leonard "Bones" McCoy, Pre Leonard "Bones" McCoy/Spock
Series: Meetings [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1670674
Comments: 11
Kudos: 75





	Chance Meetings.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy late Christmas to my dear friend!~

Despite the anger and frustration that is coursing through his veins as he stomps toward the dorm he shares with Jim, he stops at the door. Just a second. Long enough to make sure that there isn’t a sock or cowboy hat or whatever odd piece of clothing Jim was able to reach to denote he needs to head over to M’Benga’s to change out of his cadet uniform. Thankfully, there isn’t anything hanging and he grabs the doorknob, waiting the agonizing couple of seconds that it takes for his handprint to be read.

Storming into the room, door whooshing closed behind him, he misses the satisfying slam that would happen if it was an old-fashioned swing and close.

“Apparently,” Leonard snarls out slowly, not looking up from his boots to see if Jim is in the room or if he’s going to be ranting at air, “calling your soon to be brother-in-law a ‘green-blooded bastard of an elf’ while there are people around is  _ insensitive _ . Especially if there is  _ also _ a half Vulcan professor on campus!”

He manages to free both feet from his boots and is working on the process of removing the stiff, stuffy, itchy cadet shirt when he hears the first snicker.

“I have to take a class on how to be less xenophobic! A  _ xenoracial sensitivity _ course to be exact. Because these damn fools think I’d be stupid enough to toss tact out the goddamn window while working! Can you believe that, Jim?”

“Yes.”

That… that isn’t Jim who answers, the voice is too high pitched. Swallowing thickly Leonard looks up, hands frozen on a particularly stubborn button. Oh, Jim is in the room alright. He’s half naked and sitting on his bed, cards in hand. And Gaila is sitting there with him only missing a boot, winnings neatly folded at her side. She snickers again, fingers wiggling in a wave while Jim has his fist in his mouth to keep from laughing. Leonard scowls at his best friend.

“Keep laughing, you’re coming with me, Kid. Need an accountability partner.”

That shuts Jim up and Gaila goes from snickering and giggling to full blown laughter at his expense. This is karma. Karma for accidentally breaking into the apartment of the half Vulcan that people think he’s insulting. He wasn’t insulting Spock, of course, but did they listen to Leonard? No! 

“It’s a once a week class. Hope you didn’t have any Saturday plans for a month,” he continues going to grab his scrubs from his closet. It isn’t his fault that he thought Jim was being Jim and had done something to disengage the doorknob. Jim had done it before, laughing from inside the dorm while Leonard stood there cussing and fighting to remember the code to get in. So karma had no right to be an asshole to him for using the code that Jim swore was theirs. He didn’t know it was effectively a damn skeleton key. And at that point in the night he was too drunk to realize that he had walked too far.

Heading toward the bathroom he scowls again at Jim.

“This is your fault!”

Jim makes a noise like a disgruntled duck at Leonard’s back. He’s waiting outside the bathroom when Leonard opens the door, nearly hitting the blond in the process. 

“How is it my fault?” Jim demands.

“Everything that has happened has happened because I puked on your shoes,” Leonard says, affection leaking into his voice, “and then you went and bonded with my niblings. Cementing you and your adventures and chaos into my life. So, your fault.”

His mood improved, he says his goodbyes and heads to his shift at the ER.

* * *

Working in the trauma unit in Georgia, in the big city and then again in a smaller town, is hard work. It gets you used to stress and panic and you learn how to bend the ‘do no harm’ rule to defend yourself. What it does  _ not _ teach you or get you used to is idiot children being allowed near technology they shouldn’t be near. And,  _ yes _ , he knows that most of the children he’s dealing with aren’t actually children. They’re grown humans and aliens acting with less sense than a headless chicken. After the  _ fifth _ Engineering track student to need patching up, coming in with various burns and cuts and bruises, he’s ready to scream.

“Doctor McCoy, you’ve got a patient in treatment room three,” says one of the few nurses that have actual experience outside of Starfleet medical. She is also one of the few that he’d trust with Jim’s life.

“Thank you, Nurse Chapel,” he says taking the PADD that she holds out to him. And then he freezes mid step. This has to be a mistake. There is no way. Not with the very lengthy lecture he was forced to listen to. But there it is. Spock hellaciously- long-ass-last-name that Leonard is  _ not _ going to try to say. He had a hard enough time learning how to pronounce Volil’s clan name. Fuck that is a mouthful. For a second, he debates handing Spock off to someone else.

“He asked for you specifically if you were on duty.”

Chapel is giving him that  _ look _ . That look that says she’s judging him. Like when he gives that Russian teen a lollipop or  _ any _ time his niblings come into the ER.  _ Green-blooded hobgoblin _ is on the tip of his tongue, but he holds it in. He doesn’t want to get in more trouble. Slowly he enters the room.

* * *

* * *

“Does Doctor McCoy work here?” The words are an illogical whim that slip passed his control. A combination of leftover curiosity from the first night they met and accidental telepathic transference from the nurse guiding him into the room.

From that transference he knows that Doctor McCoy is in and the nurse, a Nurse Chapel, is very glad he is. The ‘grumpy, curmudgeon of an asshole’ whips all the other doctors into shape, forcing them into being competent or face his wrath. How or why the more experienced doctors allow that, Spock does not know.

“He does. Why?”

Spock looks down at his hand. Looks at the glass and the bits of indigo cactus sticking out of it.

“Would it be possible for him to tend to me?”

Spock is not a name known in the ER for a few reasons. One of them being that he finds most of the care he receives to be lacking. Very few doctors take into account that he is only half Vulcan and that he cannot have some of the staple medicine that his father can, nor can his body properly metabolize medicines his mother’s can. 

Emotions flicker across Nurse Chapel’s face before she smiles at him.

“Of course, sir, I’ll be sure to bring him right to you. Sit tight.”

Spock chooses to ignore the illogicalness of the statement and focuses on a light meditation to keep his mind off the pain. A little while later, he hears someone talking.

_ “He asked for you specifically if you were on duty.” _

He looks over at the door, Doctor McCoy is entering like he’s expecting a trap. Nurse Chapel just a step behind him.

“While I expected you to get me in trou- good lord man, what happened to your hand!?”

His hand, which had ceased to hurt thanks to the meditation, throbs once in painful tandem with his heart. Most illogical.

“It has been hurt,” Spock says dryly.

Anger flares up on the doctor’s face. Cheeks flushing, eyes brightening. And then the doctor takes a deep breath, retrieves the gloves that help dampen telepathic transference and gives Spock a look that Sarek would envy if Vulcans felt envy. 

“And how was it hurt?”

“I placed it in the path of an exploding experiment that was left unattended. It was either that, or let Cadet Langley suffer for her lab partner’s incompetence.”

That gets him a small smile. A flick of the lips. The observation Spock made many nights ago rears its head. Doctor McCoy is very aesthetically pleasing.

“There, that wasn’t hard to say, was it? Why you Vulcans gotta give me the ring around, I don’t know!”

During his rant Doctor McCoy has moved closer to him, to the point where he was cupping Spock’s hand. 

“You know other Vulcans?”

Doctor McCoy looks up from his hand, hazel eyes calculating something.

“I do. My sister is dating one. Met him in one of her anthropology classes.”

Nurse Chapel presses a pair of tweezers into the doctor’s unoccupied hand. Spock looks at it in apprehension. Vulcan hands are very sensitive, and it is taking everything he has not to express his pain.

“Maybe I can get a straight answer from you. Seeing how you owe me.”

Spock’s eyes dart up to Doctor McCoy’s face, mouth opening to correct the doctor. If anyone owes anyone it would be Doctor McCoy owing  _ him _ . The doctor had accidentally broken a rather ugly vase gifted to Spock by a cadet during his impromptu stay.

“Vulcan marriages. How long are they? I read somewhere that every Vulcan has a preselected spouse, will this spouse cause trouble for Hollis? I don’t gotta be naked again do I?”

He glances at Nurse Chapel who appears just as lost as he is.

“It depends on the cla- aaah!”

Doctor McCoy drops a single sliver of glass into a tray being held by Nurse Chapel. He had forgone any local anesthetics. Distantly, Spock is glad that he read Spock’s chart and noted that the only one the ER has is one that causes swelling and a rash when applied which then leads to more dire reactions.

“They say it hurts less when it’s a surprise.”

“To borrow a very human phrase, that is horse shi-aaah- it.”

“Keep talking. Distract yourself. Tell me more. Do certain clans have different ceremonies?”

And so Spock talks. Marriages while private are not forbidden from being discussed. Not like pon-farr, which is something he avoids talking about in the best of times. 

“Older clans have more traditions, greetings that must be done before the hand fasting, the meld of minds. Very traditional weddings that are done before the time-“ Spock starts to explain, cries of pain occasionally slipping out.

“Time?”

Spock gives Doctor McCoy a look.

“Damn Vulcan secrecy. Keep going… please?”

“Weddings done before the time have a reception that lasts a week. The wedding itself can be as short as two hours and as long as two days. There are robes that must be worn by the Vulcans in attendance.”

“Thank the lord.”

They are almost done with his hand and Spock is most thankful for that.

“The, as you said, preselected spouse could contest the dissolving of the bond but in most cases they do not.”

Doctor McCoy bobs his head. 

“Why did-“

“Volil likes to get my goat by being vague. Y’all say you don’t feel emotions or express them but ya do. Which is how you got me in trouble. I was expecting a reprimand for breaking into your place-“

Nurse Chapel makes a noise in the back of her throat.

“What I wasn’t expectin’ was someone takin’ offense to me talkin’ to Volil like I do my brothers.”

“You called Volil an ‘ornery old man’ or ‘soul suckin’ lawyer’?” Nurse Chapel asks before Spock can ask his own questions that are lost in a combination of pain and fascination as the doctor blushes.

“Something like that… and with that, Mister Spock, you are done.”

Spock looks down and sees that his hand is free of glass and cactus.

“I’m going to wrap it instead of running a regen over it. Very small pieces of glass could come up in a few days, so I want you to watch for that.”

“Of course.”

Nurse Chapel backs out of the room, a small smile on her face. Not that Spock actually notices. 

“Doctor Boyce is holding an off campus lecture on xenobiology, are you going?” He asks, explanations and excuses at the ready should the doctor answer in the negative.

Doctor McCoy blinks.

“I am.”

“Would it be forward to ask if I could sit next to you during it?”

“You asking me out on a date? Two months in advance?”

Spock lets his lips twitch.

“Perhaps.”

* * *

* * *

Two months is a long time to wait for a date. Though Spock had followed it up with a ‘Should our paths cross before then-‘.

Sneaky, plotting little hobgoblin. The half Vulcan is attractive. He remembers thinking that, vaguely, in the way one remembers things from times when they were drunkenly grieving. So agreeing to wait that long and to see what fate decides for them in the meantime is no problem. He just has to not piss off anybody to where they kick him out of the academy.

Which… is hard. The xenoracial sensitivity course is mind numbing. Going over things he already knows, pounding in lessons his mother had taught when he was a child. And every time he tried to explain what had actually happened. To explain that Volil wasn’t offended by what was said, they threatened him with demerits and suspensions from not only the academy but from the medical ER. Not even Jim found it funny anymore.

“As today is the last day of the course, we are going to see if you learned everything you should have. That your accountability partners aren’t lying and saying you’ve approved,” the instructor says. She’s standing at a podium and looking directly at Leonard as she says this. Less than pleasant thoughts enter his mind about her.

“As most of you were brought here because of individual complaints, you are going to be calling those you wronged and apologize.”

“Oh, this is going to be fun,” Leonard whispers to Jim who snickers. The instructor glares at them.

One by one the small group of people go up to the rather large view screen that the instructor points at. They dial up numbers. Sometimes the calls are answered, forced apologies are made. Other times there is silence. And then it is Leonard’s turn.

He dials the number by heart. Hollis should be home. Whether Volil is or not is a toss up. There are three rings and then Hollis answers. She’s wearing one of Volil’s robes and her whole face lights up when she sees Leonard. There is a toothbrush sticking out of her mouth that makes it almost comical.

“Mister McCoy-“ the instructor starts to scold and the entire class gets to see that the thunderous expression that often greets them in the ER when they’ve been stupid is hereditary. 

“Doctor,” Hollis interrupts, voice low and dangerous, toothbrush held like one , “my little brother is a doctor. Don’tcha go disrespecting him just cause ya got a bee in your bonnet.”

Leonard snickers.

“ _ Doctor _ ,” the instructor manages to make the title sound like an insult, “you were supposed to call the one you wronged. Professor Spock. Not your… sister.”

“See that’s the thing you’ve been refusing to hear. I wasn’t talking to or about Professor Spock.”

Volil comes up behind Hollis, his fingers running over Hollis’s in a Vulcan kiss. There is no denying that Volil is a Vulcan. And any doubt is taken away when he lifts his hand in the traditional greeting.

“Leonard.”

“Volil! Just the Vulcan I was looking for. So remember when you refused to give me a straight answer? I… overstepped and I apologize.”

“I do not understand.”

“He insulted you. Overstepped, trampled even, cultural norms and respect. He hurled racial slurs at you!” The instructor says, disbelief in her voice. She was the one who heard Leonard call Volil a ‘green-blooded bastard of an elf’, the one who made him come here. Volil levels her with a very dour look.

“They are endearments. Like ‘kitten’ only platonic. Every family has its own dynamic to which they address the significant others of their siblings. Leonard has never crossed any lines when speaking to me,” Volil says very calmly, “and to assume that you know how I perceive things is both presumptuous and illogical.”

“I… I-“

“You assumed when it would have been simpler to just ask.”

The urge to say ‘I told you so’ as childish as it is, is there on his tongue. He doesn’t though. He holds it back and lets Volil continue to politely rip into the woman. The other three Saturdays were hell, but this makes it all worth it. Now he just has to wait another few weeks for his date.

**Author's Note:**

> This story is part of the [LLF Comment Project](https://longlivefeedback.tumblr.com/llfcommentproject), which was created to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites and appreciates feedback, including:  
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